Buck Harvey: Next step for Spurs: Talkin’ in Memphis

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Grizzlies beat up the Spurs, and then the Spurs beat up themselves.

Antonio McDyess used a word that newspapers can’t print to describe the way the Spurs are playing, and others put it in more civilized terms.

“It was sad,” Manu Ginobili said.

They will hear worse from others. The Spurs looked old, and they looked passive, and they looked like what the TNT crew said Monday night. Like Muhammad Ali at the end of his career.

Here’s another one: Ali, even then, would have also beat up the Spurs.

But this isn’t all bad.

Because this is what the Spurs need to hear.

Nothing anyone says might matter. The only other team to lose as a No. 1 seed in a seven-game first-round series is Dallas, in 2007. Then, the Mavericks fell to an uptempo, crazy-shooting Golden State group.

The Spurs, instead, are losing to a version of what the Spurs once were. The Grizzlies are younger, taller, tougher and far better on defense.

They stuck with the Spurs in the first half, even when the Spurs were making shots and showing life. Then, Memphis took over the second half, fittingly beginning with a Richard Jefferson miss.

On this night, Ali scored as many points as Jefferson.

But it wasn’t just missed shots. When the Grizzlies tightened on defense, the Spurs were overwhelmed. They started going one-on-one, losing as much on the mental side as the physical.

As it has been so often in this series: The experienced team didn’t act like it.

“It was a very embarrassing,” Ginobili also admitted.

The Memphis starters remained what they’ve been, but now the Griz bench has joined in. O.J. Mayo is playing like the top-5 pick he once was, and Darrell Arthur is playing like he should have been one.

It ended with Gregg Popovich pulling his guys, as if this was January. And, afterward, Popovich pulled his punches.

Do you change the mentality for the next game, he was asked.

“No,” he said. “We’ll just go play.”

Popovich knows he doesn’t have to say anything, unlike last year early in the series against the Mavericks when he said some of the Spurs played like “dogs.” This time he left them to say that about each other.

Maybe it’s only frustration talking. McDyess’ career could end as early as Wednesday, and the only reason he came back at all was for the championship that eluded him in Detroit.

That, and a third foul, was a good reason to hurl his mouthpiece and draw a technical foul.

But all of them feel the urgency. As Tony Parker said last September before the season even started, “I think this will be our last real chance to win a title.”

Remember his explanation then?

“Duncan aging,” Parker said, and a play late in the third quarter suggested he has. Then, Marc Gasol beat Tim Duncan to a rebound for a score.

Still, the previous three games in this series have been toss-ups, and Memphis won two of them with 3-pointers in the final seconds. Is Monday the new reality, or was it the kind of blowout that happens in the playoffs?

Last year, before eliminating the Mavericks, the Spurs lost in Dallas by 22.

Against New Orleans in 2008, the Spurs lost on the road by 19, 18 and 22 — and won the series.

So maybe a team that won 61 games in the regular season hasn’t suddenly aged and isn’t Ali. But the only way for the Spurs to reboot, and return to a competitive stance, is for them to admit to everything.